This is Dave Edstrom's personal blog called Photons and Electrons. This blog is about technology, as well as some of my personal interests. I am the CEO/CTO of Virtual Photons Electrons. I was the CTO for MEMEX for three years, the President and Chairman of the Board for the MTConnect Institute from May 2010 to January 2014 and prior to that I spent 23 years at Sun Microsystems.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

The tragedy at Virginia Tech is still heart wrenching. As a parent of a VT freshman, it is still hard to comprehend the magnitude of this tragedy. Therewere many heroes on VT's Campus on April 16th, 2007. Manyare well documented in the press.

There are five individuals who were behind the scenesthat are absolute heroes in my mind. Those five heroes arethe individuals who run online Collegiate Times which isVT's main online paper and kept the world informed on thelatest breaking news coming out of VT on this senselesstragedy. These five individuals were literally workingaround the clock, giving up sleep to keep their fellowstudents, parents, family, friends, faculty and the rest ofthe world informed.These five unsung heroes all have the "first of humanqualities" - courage. It would have been perfectlyunderstandable if these five individuals would have givenup when their servers went down. But they did not. Theyhad the courage to literally work around the clock to getthe server back up *and* keep the rest of the worldinformed of the latest updates to one of the most ofhorrific days in the history of our country. The fiveindividuals are:

"The Internet became a prime place for people to get the news out of Blacksburg. The college newspaper, the Collegiate Times, scooped the major media, getting the story online, right after the first shot rang out, and staying on it non-stop ever since.

The 104-year-old paper received up to 53 million hits by early Monday afternoon, forcing the site down for a time. It also listed some of the dead early Tuesday morning, prompting the New York Times Web site and other news outlets to link to the Collegiate Times."

Besides the list of confirmed deceased, the site provides a graphic map of the shootings, a photo gallery, personal accounts and interviews and related stories ranging from emerging donation details to the impact on the nearest hospital. The staff has handled the facts correctly, but not without compassion, which is a difficult task.

The Collegiate Times editorial says, "When considering the number of deceased victims, 32 is devastating, but those lives are not just a number, each one is a member of our community." Journalism cannot be disregarded due to a personal tragedy, since citizens rely on journalists for information. Such journalists must remember, however, that although horrific tragedies stir media attention as sensational, there is nothing sensational about human suffering and coverage must be conducted tastefully.

Well done Collegiate Times staff.

To those that believe campus newspapers are a waste of time and funding, let this tragedy serve the purpose of proving the necessity of campus newspapers nationwide."

"National Public Radio is among news organizations that have profiled and praised Virginia Tech student newspaper, The Collegiate Times, which has become a crucial source of information for other reporters covering Monday's events.

The papers online edition, said NPR's Larry Abramson, has grabbed international attention indeed, on Tuesday The New York Timess home page linked to the student publications list of confirmed victims of the shooter. Mr. Abramson also pointed out that Collegiate Times staff members know how to mine Facebook for information inaccessible to many older reporters who are unfamiliar with the social-networking site." -

"The face of a crisis, the writers, photographers and editors of Virginia Tech's student daily, The Collegiate Times, transcended their roles as college journalists to not only inform their community, but to inform the world. With many local news sources shut out, only limited comments coming from Virginia Tech officials and an entire campus on lock-down, the importance of these students' work was heightened to an extreme. The written, photographic and video posts to The Times website throughout the day were among the most vivid and honest portraits of the campus available. Working from computers outside of their offices, the students held nothing back, and produced a raw, emotional narrative of the tragedy. Their reporting was effective, critical and in every sense, brave."

"While the editors of the student newspaper went about their work with inspiring leadership, internal communications by Virginia Tech administrators showed the University was less than fully prepared. As more and more details about the sequence of events have been released, it has become clear that administrators did not notify the entire campus or order a full lockdown until more than two hours after the first round of shooting began. Whether or not any of the deaths in the second round of shooting could have been avoided, we should realize the need for all institutions to prepare for the unimaginable. And in the face of this shooting, college administrators everywhere should recognize the need to share information with their communities quickly and clearly, even as the full extent of a crisis may remain unknown."

"The college paper at Virginia Polytechnical Institute kept a running account of the tragedy that struck the campus today, with more than 30 students gunned down in at least two areas of the campus, a dorm and a classroom. The shooter is allegedly dead as well, but not identified. It is not known if he was a student ...

Here is how the student-run Collegiate Times reported it, blog-style, with the most recent posting first. A full article is now posted there, which includes the note that police "are also investigating if it has any relation to the recent bomb threats on Tech's campus."

"While news organizations like CNN have done a thorough job in covering Monday's events, I'd like to point the readers of kansan.com to Virginia Tech's student newspaper, the Collegiate Times. After overcoming early technical difficulty when the news initially broke, they've done what I feel is an admirable job as the student voice of the Virginia Tech community.

In the process of learning about these tragic events, be sure to not overlook the students themselves. http://www.collegiatetimes.com"

"I found a couple sites with unique angles on this story. One of the most interesting is The Collegiate Times, which is VT's student newspaper. Their staff apparently first reported this shooting this morning. The server is overwhelmed right now, but it will be interesting to check their coverage in the days and weeks ahead."

Forbes "Monday's shooting at Virginia Tech provided a grim, real-time stress test for the effectiveness of Web 2.0 technologies. And on Monday, all of them seemed to work: Information flew through text messages, blog posts, Web sites, online videos and social networking sites.

The Internet reacted to the event immediately--and more quickly than Virginia Tech administrators, who took two hours to warn students, via e-mail, about a first shooting. The Web site of VT's student newspaper, the Collegiate Times, crashed when students flooded it after the first shooting. As a replacement, students created a low-tech blog, CollegeMedia.com.

It posted the first entry about the event at 9:47 a.m., minutes before the second shooting began."

"And as this happened, students at the Collegiate Times, the Virginia Tech student newspaper, were able to live-blog the days events. The Web site began the day with a post at 9:47 a.m. EST, reporting Shots were fired on campus and provided continuing updates throughout the day. The entries of the papers staff provide an illuminating window into the fear and questioning that doubtless gripped the campus in those uncertain hours."

"The Collegiate Times, Virginia Tech's campus newspaper, was the first media outlet to break the story Monday with on-line reports of shots fired on campus."

"No amount of on-the-job experience or education could have prepared Kelly Furnas for what he's faced this week in his capacity as an editorial advisor to the campus newspaper at grief-stricken Virginia Tech University.

.....

To be honest its been pretty much non-stop working with the student newspaper I have not had time on a personal level to sit down and digest everything yet," Furnas said.

The Collegiate Times, Virginia Tech's campus newspaper, was the first media outlet to break the story Monday with on-line reports of shots fired on campus.

"I can't put into words how proud I am of our students," Furnas said. "They have provided desperately needed information to their readers, and they have done that with gusto. I think the campus newspaper's reputation with the students here has helped a lot."

"'The school's student newspaper, The Collegiate Times, filed up-to-the-minute online dispatches. At 4.44pm: "Police have confirmed that the shooter took his own life." At 4.54pm: "University Relations has confirmed 31 deaths at Norris Hall, in addition to two deaths at West Ambler Johnson."

The Collegiate Times (its server quickly crashed and a blog written by editors with messages from students appeared instead on the web site of the newspapers owning company), as well as to media outlets around the world, including CNN and the BBC. Regardless of where the contributions are aimed, the back and forth on facebook.com and other social networking sites are equally an instant and new resource for news producers and reporters

"The paper's scoops included eyewitness accounts of the shootings, interviews with a classmate of the shooter and a list of victims' names that was posted late Tuesday. A reporter was one of the first to question administrators about why they didn't warn students during the two hours between the two shootings Monday morning."

Poyneronline "The Web staff for Virginia Tech's student newspaper, The Collegiate Times, was also scrambling for solutions after its servers crashed around 10:30 a.m. the day of the shootings.

Online editor Chris Ritter's main goal was to get the site back to its original state -- a large, graphical and Flash-intensive homepage. When that couldn't happen, Ritter and his staff opted for a simple text page with blue background -- to ensure they could communicate information quickly to users. After that page continued to overload its own server, The Collegiate Times tech adviser, Scott Chandler, suggested that the staff use the College Media server, the parent company which hosts the publication's site.

Once the site stabilized on the additional server, The Collegiate Times began posting photos and videos to a third server usually reserved for design research and development. To prevent crashing again, a Virginia Tech server is now hosting videos and photos for the site.

Monday night The Collegiate Times staff redesigned its homepage from scratch to have a Web site that was "intuitive and a graphically pleasing display" of its special content for the shootings. The Collegiate Times began creating breaking-news multimedia when escaped convict William Morva shot two police officers at Virginia Tech on the first day of school last August.

Since then, Ritter said users are looking at the Web for information more than ever before, and the staff has adopted a Web-first attitude change."

About Dave Edstrom

This is Dave Edstrom's personal blog called Photons and Electrons. This is the same name of the blog I had for Sun Microsystems for many years. I am the CEO/CTO for Virtual Photons Electrons, LLC. More info is available at http://VirtualPhotonsElectrons.com I was the CTO for MEMEX for almost three years. More information on MEMEX is at http://MemexOEE.com